


The 


Public School 
Problem In 
America 


By 
Dr. H. W. Evans, Imperial Wizard, 
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan 





Outlining fully the policies 
and the program of the 
Knights of the Ku Klux 
Klan toward the Public 
School System 





Copyright 1924, K. K. K. 








The Public School Problem 
In American 


Out of his boyhood has come to us the sub- 
limely simple supplication of Abraham Lincoln: 


“God help father, help mother, help sister, help every- 
body Teach me to read and write Watch over Honey and 
make him a good dog. And keep us all from getting lost in 
the wilderness. Amen.” 


While Lincoln was on his childish knees, 

eee the phrophetic prayer that we be kept 
rom getting lost in the wilderness, there lived 

a man made in God’s image who preached and 
practiced the solution to that problem. Horace 
Mann, the immortal sponsor and patron saint of 
education in America, believed that— 

“The national safety, prosperity and happiness 
could be obtained only through free public schools, open 
to all, good enough for all and attended by all.”’ 

I have come to speak to you in support of that 
fundamental American doctrine, to proclaim its 
importance to every phase of our eet and 
public life, to urge its complete and immediate 
adoption as the most essential of all national 
policies. 

In his infancy Lincoln had experience with a 
wilderness in which boys and girls, even men 
and women, could lose their way—an uncharted 
unpeopled expanse of woods and water in which 
lurked the deadliest dangers. He lived to see 
those perils disappear. Others, vastly more 
vital, began to loom large and menacing. His 
utterances contain many warnings with respect 
to a new kind of wilderness in which, not citi- 
zens, but society, might go astray. 

There is no longer a frontier America, but we 
have a wilderness in which predominates as 
much of stealth and more of vindictiveness than 
any jungle ever knew. It does not endanger 
individuals so much as it menaces society. Out 
of it crouching creatures no longer spring upon 
humans to satisfy the pangs of hunger; instead 
we have creations that prey upon humanity to 
appease appetites and passions for power. 

A spirit of lawlessness is endian the land, 
and fast ripening into an anarchy that is none- 
theless real because garbed in the ermine 
of respectability and unconnected with red ban- 
ners and black bombs. Our ideals and traditions 


3 


are being weakened by disrespect and inatten- 

tion. The art and dignity of enactment is being 

superseded by the unscrupulous science of legal 

evasion and subterfuge. Our politicians seek 

not the common welfare, but their own success. 

Our schools are in every way inadequate; they. 
have not the institutional standing to which 

they are entitled; they do not prevent illiteracy, 

nor always promote patriotism; too often they 

teach a aided allegiance. Many of our churches 

are becoming bickering centers and sources of 
ceaseless, strife-engendering controversy, fight- 

ing not the forces of evil, but each other, church 

against church, creed against creed. Out of it 

all, and because of it all, there has almost ceased 

to exist that priceless boon to humankind known 

as news; propaganda, the modern curse of civili- 

zation that spawns prejudice and nurtures in- 

justice, has taken its place. Our modern wilder- 

ness is full of darkness. Truth, God's truth and 
man's truth, has become a vagrant—ragged, distorted 
and discredited by selfishness as never before in human 

history. 

In all things, public and private, truth must 
prevail. Individually, that means intelligence, 
health and virtue. Nationally, it means liberty 
and justice, the safeguarding of our traditions, 
the fulfillment of our ideals. 

To civilization it means security and con- 
tinued progress onward and upward. To attain 
truth, we must adopt, without reservation or 
evasion, not years hence, but now, the kind, 
quality and quantity of education advocated by 
Horace Mann. 

Had that been done a half century ago, we 
would not now be in a wilderness of chaotic 
conflicts and confusing controversies. The re- 
ligious wrangling that again threatens our 
security and the peace of the world would not 
exist. Instead af an already menacing growth 
of divided allegiance, there would be national 
solidarity. The separation of church and state 
would be accomplished. Our patriotism would 
be operative, rather than so generally inept 
and purposeless. Had education been founda- 
tionally established; had it been extended, and 
kept free of every perversion; had there been 
“*free public schools. open to all, good enough for all, 
and attended by all,’’performing their function 
of teaching ‘‘truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 


4 


the truth,’’ we would not today be in a life and 
death grapple with propaganda. 


I submit to you that all through the ages, 
whenever and wherever God’s purposes have 
been manifest in the affairs of men, resulting in 
what we call an advance of civilization, that 
achievement has had as its vehicle a temporarily 
wholesome national life. Through some nation- 
al entity has come every bit of ground gained by 
and for civilization. The elements contributing 
to every advancement have always been law and 
order, enlightenment, unity, freedom and justice. 
Interpreted in terms of today, the antithesis of 
these fundamentals may be stated as Jawlessness, 
illiteracy, disrupting strife and controversy, propa- 
ganda instead of truth, and the economic inequities 
that increasingly threaten the very stability of society. 


I now advocate the adequate education of our 
future citizenship through a free public school 
system, as I have pleaded for a rigidly enforced 
immigration, adapted to our ideals and needs. 
The two remedies go together. Neither alone 
can re-Americanize and safeguard our sacred 
institutions, If this country continues to be 
flooded by inferior peoples whose assimilation 
is impossible, the task of enlightened advance- 
ment will be hopeless. Our indifference of the 
last three decades in this connection has already 
made it extremely difficult; but if we now place 
an embargo upon every alien element not in 
harmony with our requirements, it is not yet 
too late for the redemption of the Republic by 
means of the public school for children and its 
auxiliaries for adults. Let immigration of every 
undesirable type be stopped, completely stopped, 
until our own illiteracy and internal strife can 
be superseded by a literacy based upon unselfish, 
unshackled truth and patriotism built upon 
eager, unqualified, un-coerced acceptance of the 
principles that are the very foundation of our 
government. In the meantime, with the further 
over-burdening of our composite people through 
unmergeable immigration at an end, we can, 
with some assurance of success, give constructive 
attention to the emancipation of America from 
ignorance and prejudice. Wecan free our beloved 
country from every darkness and danger. 


Our Children the Cheif Asset of the State 


You cannot disassociate citizenship from 
civilization. We have a government, of by and 


5 


for the people. The great problem, then, concerns 
two vital things; the character and the ability of 
our composite people. Their development, hith- 
erto neglected, is a public responsibility pas 
mount to all other constructive duties of the 
state. 

We area Republic. The consent of the governed is 
the underlying principle of our public life. That 
being basic, the only sure highway to national 
success is adequate democratic education. 

Every statesman worthy the name has recog- 
nized that its children were the greatest asset of 
any state, and has based his hope for a glorious 
national future upon their highest development 
as individuals and as citizens. Out of each de- 
cade from the Declaration of Independence to 
this hour, I could summon the most notable 
witnesses to attest the truth of that doctrine and 
the necessity for its completest attainment. 

George Washington, in his farewell address, 
gave this council: 


“Promote then, as an object of primary importance, 
institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In 
proportion as the structure of government gives force to 
public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be 
enlightened.” 


Let me recall another voice from the days of 
our infancy. The famous “‘Ordinance of 1787” 
contains this historic declaration: 


“Religion, morality and knowledge, being necessary to 
good government and the happiness of mankind, schools 
and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”’ 


That was our earliest educational statute on a 
national scale. While it gave legal standing toa 
mighty principle, it did not soe either the 
means or the machinery of fulfillment. Two gen- 
erations later, we find Daniel Webster paying 
this tribute to its fundamental value: 


“I doubt whether one single law of any lawgiver, ancient 
or modern, bas produced effects of more distant, marked 
and Jasting character than the Ordinance of 17&7 . . . It 
set forth and declared it to be a high and binding duty of 
Government to support schools and advance the means of 
education. 


The greatest American tragedy was not un- 
folded upon any battle field, or in any series of 
catastrophies. It exists in the fact that neither 
the advice of Washington nor the spirit of this 
ordinance were carried out. That was why 
Daniel Webster referred to it. In 1866, seventy- 


6 


mine years after, James A. Garfield, later to 
occupy the White House, presented to Congress 
an Education Association memorial from which 
I quote: 


“Your memorialists beg leave to express their earnest 
belief that universal education, next to universal liberty, is 
a matter of deep national concern. Our experiment of 
republican institutions is not upon the scale of a petty 
municipality or state, but it covers half a continent and 
embraces peoples of widely diverse interests and conditions, 
but who are to continue ‘one and inseparable.’ Every 
condition of our perpetuity and progress as a nation adds 
emphasis to the remark of Montesquieu, “ it is in a republican 
government that the whole power of education is required.’ ”’ 


The occasion of that memorial was the fight 
for more adequate public school education then 
engaging the attention of thoughtful, patriotic 
Americans. Of that attempt I shall speak later. 
I refer to it here because you should understand 
that this present battle began two generations 
ago, and also that at no time, from Washington 
to Lincoln, or since, have the educational 
facilities of the nation been more than a be- 
ginning of what were required for the safety 
and advancement of a great Republic. 

In his remarkable book on ‘“‘Child Labor and 
the Constitution,’’ Mr. Raymond G. Fuller savs: 


“What nation shall be greatest among the nations of the 
‘New World’? That nation shall be greatest that puts 
children first in its thought, in its politics, in its economics, 
in its ethics The nation that accepts the leadership of little 
children and sets them in the midst of its counselors, that 
nation will lead all others in the health, intelligence, moral- 
ity, efficiency and happiness of its citizens and in national 
prosperity both material and spiritual. On the quality of 
nations international peace and progress depend ”’ 


To show the extent of our failure, I present 
the opinion of Dr. Alexander J. Englis, Profes- 
sor of Education at Harvard University, who 
said in 1922: 


“In the first place let us recognize that in all parts of this 
country public education is very, very far from being that 
which we should all like to see it, that in parts of the country 
it is almost unbelievably bad, that vocational education has 
scarcely begun to be recognized, that the amount of illiter- 
acy and of near-illiteracy is alarmingly great, that attention 
to Oe education throughout the country is almost 
negligible, that our large foreign population constitutes a 
serious problem for education and for society, that most 
country children do not have anything like a fair oppor- 
tunity for education, that in many sections of the country 
short school terms make effective education all but impos- 
sible, that a large part of our teachers lack proper education, 
training and experience—let us recognize all these and 
many other defects of education too numerous to catalog. 


7 


They are conditions which cry aloud for reform in tye 
appealing voices of children deprived of their rights as 
American citizens. They are undoubted and indubitable 
facts which cannot be ignored.” 


Dr. Englis here speaks of “‘the defects of edu- 
cation too numerous to catalog."’ My serious study 
of the whole problem suggests one funda- 
mental difficulty that is not in any catalog, a 
aandicap that goes back to the beginning, ane 
erore the beginning of the public school system. 
in fact, who among you now can say when, or 
how, our public school system began? The 
public school is the most essential of all Amer- 
ican institutions; we all know that; yet, unlike 
any other great American institution, it did 
not come into existence with clearly defined 
distinctive character. No date or event marks 
its birth. No national document ever bestowed 
upon it specific principles and purposes. Nor 
was the basic question of its relation to govern- 
ment ever fully and finally determined. I 
mention these things to show that in this 
country public school education was never 
rightly honored by a place in any organic act 
like the Declaration of Independence, or the 
Constitution; nor was it ever given deserved 
recognition in any outstanding federal enact- 
ment. It just grew, in almost haphazard fash- 
ion, through a kind of vagrant evolution, into 
what it is today, with only about one- -seventh 
of the efficiency that our national needs demand. 


For centuries education was exclusively of, 
py and for the church. That was yet quite 
largely the situation throughout Europe at the 
time of American colonization. The first 
evidences of change were in Holland and 
Scotland, and among the Puritans and Hugue- 
nots of England and France. Those earliest 
liberals had a vision of universal education, 
but there remained in their minds the idea of 
a religious objective. 

Then, in the eighteenth century, philan- 
thropy took an interest in education. Next 
there were charity schools. After that, thank 
God, came the conception of the American 
common school, emerging slowly and uncer- 
tainly, because, as I have shown, it was an 
organic orphan, and had to shift for itself. 


As the colonies differed, so did their schools. 
But gradually American education took on a 
type of its own, although it was not until 


8 


three quarters of a century after the birth o! 
the Republic that the public school, as we now 
know it, was at all firmly established. 

No one will deny that it was always the 
intention to have adequate education in Amer- 
ica. Private and public declarations of that 
high purpose are abundant; but the trouble was, 
and is, that the cause of public education was 
mever given the sanction and standing, yea, 
and the security, that could be obtained only 
through basic recognition of its paramount 
importance. 

The truth is that half our national life was 
lived without a general pub! c school system, 
and that, during the last half, public schools 
have been pitifully inadequate, to which 
failures can be traced most of the national ills 
that now beset us. 

At the half-way mark two of our greatest 
Americans entered the arena to battle for this 
cause. They were Horace Mann of Massachu- 
setts and Henry Barnard of Connecticut. To 
them America owes the highest, grandest, 
monuments ever erected to her most deserving 
heroes. 

Out of their statesmanship and the labors of 
others of that period came the effort to give 
public school education the standing it should 
have had in the beginning. , 


In 1867, James A. Garfield sponsored legisla- 
tion to create a Department of Education. 
Henry Barnard became the Commissioner of 
Education, but without a place in the Cabinet. 
Through the influence of the enemies of Demo- 
cratic Education, the Department of Education 
was demoted to a mere Bureau, under the 
Secretary of the Interior, which it has since 
remained. Henry Barnard resigned. The clock 
of true progress for America was set back, not 
days, but decades. 


The big thing, the fundamental, all important 
thing to be accompolished for the cause of Democratic 
Education in America is to give it the recognition, the 
dignity, the established standing, of a high place in 
the Cabinet. We are supporting a program to 
establish a Department of Education, with a 
Cabinet Secretary at its head. 


Why A Department Of Education. 


If there be the slightest doubt as to what a 
Department of Education would mean to the 


9 


public school system, that doubt will disappear 
when you understand the attitude toward it of 
the enemies of democratic education. In a few 
minutes I shall discuss the forces, or rather the 


only organized force, that is opposing the — 


American public school system. At this point 
I desire only to show that this opposition by 
the Roman Catholic hierarchy is aimed chiefly 
at the idea of a Department of Education. That 
is what they fear. 


You will remember that there was but little 
activity in behalf of the Smith-Towner bill 
during the Sixty-seventh Congress, because of 
the pending measure to establish a Department 
of Public Welfare, with Education only a 
bureau in it. With respect to that situation, I 
quote in part a letter, issued on May 4, 1921, 
by the National Catholic Welfare Council, as 
follows: 


“It should further be noted that other measures are now 
under consideration by the leaders in Congress which may 
obviate the need of opposition to the Towner Bill Should 
the McCormic Bill be passed and the Department of Public 
Welfare be established, the Bureau of Education would 
simply be’ transferred from the Department of the Interior 
to the Department of Public Welfare; it would not be erected 
into a seperate department. In that case, the situation 
would practically be what it is at present.” 


In other words, the heirarchy does not 
oppose legislation that leaves matters as they 
are, with a poor, powerless, undignified Bureau 
of Education, instead of a Department of 
Education which would at once and forever 
suggest to every American that at last our 
public schools had been given the recognition 
and standing that should have been their 
governmental position from the very beginning. 

Therefore, I say to you that this part of our 
program is the all-important part; that there 
must be no compromise upon this issue. 

When we have given public schools organic signifi- 
cance, as the creation of a Department of Education 
will do, while that belated act alone cannot at once 
remedy the enervating results of one hundred and 
thirty-five years of neglected duty, of wasted citizen- 
ship, it will ease the national conscience and be 
followed quickly by a new and constantly accelerat- 
ing educational vigor throughout the Republic. It 
will mark the beginning of a rising tide of common 
intelligence, health, and virtue among both the native 
and adopted sons and daughters of America. 


Io 


The Shameful Inadequacy Of Education. 


The indictment is that ‘‘the defects of educa- 
tion are too numerous to catalog.’’ How much 
more impossible is it to catalog the conse- 
quences of those defects. When we face the 
results of our inadequate public school system, 
the situation becomes positively appalling. 

Each year, there is made for taxation, an 
apptaisement of our material wealth. An 
inventory, On as exact and scientific a scale, 
of the much more vital human values has 
never been attempted. It happened, however, 
quite incidently, that the nation was per- 
mitted to get a glimpse at the menacing after- 
math of educational inadequacy. When our 
young manhood was conscripted for service 
in the great war, they were examined, mentally 
and physically; tests were made and recorded; 
the results are known. At least we may look 
squarely at the terrible truth about our com- 
posite humanity, and relate its degeneracy 
directly to the failure of our school system. 

The census returns had been telling us that there 
was six per cent illiteracy in America. The army 
tests revealed that 20.9 per cent of the drafted men 
were “unable to read and understand newspapers, 
and write letters home in the English language.” 

Remember that a majority of those young 
men were less than a decade removed from their 
educational days. This evidence is of failure, 
not remote, but almost immediately related to 
the civilization-destroying inadequacies of the 
present public school system. 

Today, in the United States, there is thirty 
times as much absolute illiteracy as in Germany and 
Denmark; there is twelve times as much illiteracy here 
as in Switzerland; six times as much as in Norway 
and Sweden; more than three times as much as in 
England, Scotland and Wales. 

At the present rate of diminishment, it 
would take eighty-four years to eliminate 
illiteracy in this country, taking absolute 
illiteracy figures, instead of the more depressing 
army tests. If we accept the latter as a basis, 
fully five hundred years would elapse before 
illiteracy were stamped out of our national 
life. 

There are in this country 2) aang 
twenty-five million boys and girls of school age. 
Were those of university years to be included, 


It 


the number would reach above thirty-three 
million. In 1920, according to census statistics, 
we had 23,042,637 children between the ages 
of seven and seventeen. The grade and high 
schools, then, should be providing the best of 
educational opportunities for at least that 
number. 

In 1920, 4,405,437, a total of nineteen per 
cent of our children between the ages of seven 
and seventeen, were not attending any school. 

At the ages of fourteen and fifteen, 20.1 per 
cent were not in school. 

Among those sixteen and seventeen, 57.1 per 
cent were not in any school. 

The teachers in the public schools of America 
number 655,589. Fifty-four per cent of them 
have not had normal school training. In the 
rural schools, twenty-three per cent of these 
teachers have had less than two years of educa- 
tion above the elementary grades. Thousands 
have had no training beyond the eighth grade. 

In the face of such facts, I maintain that no 
citizen can oppose Democratic Education in 
America unless he be an un-American enemy of 
our institutions. 


Hierarchy Opposing Democratic Education. 


It is apparent, then, that from every point of 
view, except that of selfishness, the educational 
doctrine of Horace Mann should be written 
into the laws and into the life of this nation. 
Patriotism demands it, common sense sanctions 
it, every consideration of individual and nation- 
al welfare pleads its necessity. 

Why, then, has this fundamental program 
not been adopted? 

It is because of the opposition of one of the oldest 
and the most powerful special interests in the world 
today. 

The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church 
stands against America on this issue. The 
public school, in its every phase, atte and 
result, is repugnant to the Pope and all his 
priesthood. After a most thorough and un- 
biased examination of the forces for and against 
this program, I can say to you with absolute 
certainty that, excepting only civic selfishness, 
the Roman Catholic hierarchy is the one influence that 
is successfully obstructing adequate public school edu- 
cation in America. It is pursuing that course be- 
cause the hierarchy that has both its govern- 


Iz 


mental and religious headquarters at Rome is 
now, always has been, and perhaps always 
will be, opposed to the public sponsorship 
of institutions of learning. From its point 
of view, education is a prerogative of the 
church. I¢ refuses to accept secular control or to 
countenance any result that can or may subordinate 
the recruitive objects of parochialism, ‘Therefore, 
through its political power, this alien hierarchy 
says to America: ‘‘You shall not establish an 
educational system that sets up in that field an 
exclusive authority higher than that of the 
church; public schools shall not be legalized 
into a standing superior to those of the church.’ 


The hierarchy does not openly, honestly and 
frankly define its opposition or the objects of 
that opposition. Instead it resorts to camou- 
flage. What it really says to you is that our 
educational program for America would be 
unconstitutional; that national aid to public 
schools would violate states’ rights; that such 
a system as we menos would be attended by 
bureaucratic and political perversions. What 
the spokesmen of the Vatican in America really 
mean is that the further advancement of demo- 
cratic education within this Republic would be 
an insurmountable impediment to the papal 
dream of world wide temporal dominion. 


It is not possible to find a single intelligent 
citizen, whatever his or her preferences, who 
does not understand that the hierarchy is 
unalterably opposing democratic education in 
America. Therefore, in order more clearly to 

.comprehend the causes and effects of that op- 
position, it will be well at this point squarely 
to face the fundamental differences between 
Catholicism and Protestantism. 


The Vatican For Church And State 


The hierarchy believes in the closest connec- 
tion between church and state. We demand, 
in the name and in the interest of democracy, 
that they be completely separated. Through- 
out the centuries this attitude of the Vatican 
has never changed. It never will. With the 
hierarchy, and all its priesthood, always the 
church is the primary consideration. Even 
today in America, a hundred and thirty-five 
years after the adoption of our Constitution 
had made it the basic law of the land that 
government should not interfere with religion, 


Ly 


nor religion with government, neither in the 
pulpit nor in the press of Catholicism do you 
ever find country mentioned apart from the 
church. It is always ‘“‘church and country,” 
with the ‘‘church’’ coming first. That is their 
idea, not to have the church auxiliarate the 
state, but to have civil authority and political 
power serve the church. I do not criticise 
those who adhere to that doctrine. I only 
state the truth as it is, in the conviction, as 
firmly founded as their opposing belief can 
possibly be, that no religious organization can 
even seek, much less attain, temporal character 
without irreparable injury both to church and 
state. 


Church Control Of Education 


Throughout the domain of education, it is 
the theory of the hierarchy, as it is their prac- 
tice, to teach what to think. We desire that the 
young be taught how to think, that they be 
encouraged to delve deeper and deeper into all 
the hidden mines of imformation, in the hope 
and assurance that the result will be an ever- 
increasing output of helpful human and divine 
attainments; that it will bring, at least within 
the range of possibility, a harmonizing of hu- 
manity upon the rock of eternal truth; that 
finally ‘“‘peace on earth, good will to men’’ may 
become a glorious reality, to atone for the long 
darkness of misery and strife. 

Not even in matters of religion does the 
hierarchy encourage its subjects, either innocent 
children or habituated adults, to exercise real 
independence of thought or action. Bible- 
reading by the laity is discouraged. I have 
here a flippant and rather offensive reference to 
this traditional attitude, by the Catholic News, 
as follows: 


“We Catholics have no apologies to make for our church's 
Opposition to private interpretation of the Bible Every 
Tom, Dick ans Harry isn’t allowed by the United States 
Government to interpret the Constitution as he sees fit. 
The U. S. Supreme Court says the Constitution means thus 
and so. But no minister denounces Uncle Sam because of 
that fact. And the Constitution of the United States is 
much easier for the ordinary mortal to interpret than the 
Bible. If Protestantism had a Supreme Court, there wouldn't 
be so many varieties of religion among the brethern.”” 


Catholics regard education as the prerogative 
of their religion. We believe that the agencies 
and objects of education should be publicly 


14 


sponsored and controlled; that the training of the 
young is the first duty, the most fundamental function, 
of the state. 


Here is another statement of it: 


“The Catholic church ... towers above the ages, 
above nations, above men, mistress of all the forces of 
education and morality.”’ 


Those are the words of Clare Gerald Fenerty, 
from an address before the Knights of Columbus 
Dining Club at Philadelphia, as quoted in the 
Catholic Standard and Times. 


There is something far beyond the ethical 
and moral in the Catholic attitude. Just as the 
hierarchy seeks political influence in order that 
more recognition and greater benefits may 
accrue to the church, so does it have an identical 
motive in demanding church-controlled educa- 
tion. Here it is, as given expression in the 
magazine called Ave Maria: 


“Every Catholic school today means a dozen flourishing 
parishes thirty years from today.”’ 


The hierarchy, as a religious organization, 
demands the temporal right to dominate 
education, high and low, because that control 
would facilitate the spread of its own sovereignty 
in every country affected throughout the world. 


The assertion of that attitude is tempered 
only by the measure of its present power to 
enforce it. The hierarchy in America today 
does not make an open stand against all non- 
religious instruction because it does not at this 
time dare go to battle on that issue. What the 
hierarchy does seek to accomplish, through 
camouflage, is the prevention of any further 
advancement of Beote school education and of 
any curtailment of the privileges of parochial- 
ism. With the first opportunity, having re- 
cruited the necessary prestige and power, the 
Catholic hierarchy of this country would de- 
throne democratic education entirely. They 
would do that here, as certainly as the process 
is now going on in church-and-state countries. 


The Monarchist Idea 


There is another fundamental difference, the 
most basic of all. Catholicism is built and 
maintains itself, in all its temporal and re- 
ligious ramifications, upon the monarchical 
idea of the individual as subject instead of 


uy 


citizen. The doctrine of democracy in its 
every relation to humanity is exactly the re- 
verse. It exalts the individual, clothing him 
and her with all the attributes of sovereignty, 
culminating in civilization’s greatest glory, her 
only final, unfailing safeguard, “‘the consent of 
the governed”’ inal] that pertains to public affairs. 
Every theory, every condition, every hope, of 
democracy centers in the development of the 
individual, the sum total of which shall be 
social strength, intelligence and morality. 


Certainly, civilization cannot advance, nor even 
continue its present influence, tf this nation, the most 
important of all the universe, shall countenance any 
departure, socially and governmentally, from the basic 
principles of the individual as citizen instead of 
subject. 


Here is the issue. Public school education is 
democratic education. The fight against that system 
is being waged by and for Catholic parochialism, 
which is the essence of monarchy. 


Fundamental American Principles On Trial 


How is it possible for any parochial power 
to obstruct public schools in America? The 
answer goes deep—to the very vitals of our 
institutions. The truth, terrible and terrifying, 
is that our institutions have not yet been solidly 
and lastingly established. The basic principles 
of Americanism are yet on trial. The failure to 
provide, adequately and democratically, for public 
school education lies not so much in the strength of the 
opposition as in our own national weakness. 


God knows that the cause of education, 
standing alone, is sufficient to justify a life and 
death struggle with the hierarchical elements 
antagonizing its attainments; but this contro- 
versy involves other fundamentals: Our triumph 
over parochialism and propaganda must include 
other and even more fundamental vanquishments. 


In the present crises we are confronted by 
conditions, rather than theories. Theoretically, 
at the very beginning, this nation safeguarded 
its institutions through the separation of church 
and state. Actually that was never accomplished. 


The pioneers who made America had before 
them the tragic consequences of church control 
of government. They, at least their immediate 
ancestors, knew from personal experience the 
perils and persecutions of religious controversy. 


16 





They saw clearly the fateful truth that religious 
warfare was always the culminating result 
whenever and wherever a powerful church left 
the spiritual field and entered the governmental. 
They knew that every temporal invasion by a 
religious organization had invariably left a 
blood-stained trail of selfishness, cruelty and 
oppression. 

Therefore, in founding this Republic, they 
intended that there should not be, then or ever, 
any religious interference with government, 
nor any governmental interference with religion. 
Somehow, the emphasis came to be placed upon 
the second, leaving the first more a matter of 
implication. 

The Constitution provided for the utmost 
religious freedom, which was wise and just; 
it did not however, in specific, iron-clad 
language, guard against religious license in 
the field of government. It was no mote, 
and no less, the intention to do one than the 
other; but the fact remains that the basic law 
was left too open, too much subject to abuse, 
with respect to churchly encroachments upon 
sovereignty. For generations, little harm re- 
sulted. Now, suddenly, after half a century of 
unperceived growth, the un-American power 
that developed out of the one-sided freedom 
has arisen to curse and confound our efforts in 
behalf of democratic education. 


In other words, we have not yet brought about the 
separation of church and state in this country. If 
you want proof, undisputable, unimpeachable 
proof, it exists inthe fact that today, there is a 
parochial power that can, and does, say to the 
electors and legislators of America: ‘“Thus far 
shall you go, and no farther on this issue of 
education. Propaganda and propagation through 
schools, are prerogatives of Pope and _ priest- 
hood. Public welfare is subordinate to the 
temporal interests of the hierarchy.” 


I say to you then,—I say to all America— 
that the winning of this fight for democratic 
education involves vastly more than the im- 
mediate result of such a victory. Standing 
between us and that achievement is the re- 
actionary, repulsive principle of church and 
state, the civilization-destroying, war-engen- 
dering power of church over state. The very 
idea, and every influence, of that alignment 
must be broken and buried beyond resurrection. 


17 


a 
ft 


In and around, above and below, this question 
is the Vatican attitude fo superhuman, super- 
national sovereignty. To that extent the cause 
of democratic education is inseparably linked 
with the issue of church and state. Both 
battles must be fought, and won, together. 

Otherwise all our efforts for an adequate public 
school system will be transient and futile. 

The only soil in which free schools can flourish is 
that of a strictly American sovereignty, tilled by an 
undivided allegiance, watered by a patriotism that is 
undiluted and undefiled, with the sunshine of 
democracy always and forever shining upon it. 


Its Larger Meaning To Democracy 


But that is not all. In this crucial struggle 
for the Horace Mann kind and quantity of 
public school education, we are fighting a 
battle bigger even than for the final separation 
of church and state. Democracy itself, the very 
life of Constitutional government, is at stake. 


I do not need to remind you that every great 
misfortune that comes to humanity is followed, 
immediately, by monstrous perversions of power. 
Let democracy’s resistance to evil be weakened 
by any far-reaching calamity, and in that 
moment the ever alert forces of reaction will 
spring upon it, seeking the selfish results of 
oppression and enslavement. It matters not 
in what form or in whose name the assault is 
made. Whether the agency be priestly or political, 
democracy must pay the price. 

Today, in the wake of the great war, with 
its terrible toll of death and debt, again do we 
hear the voice of imperialism shouting that 
democracy has failed, that democracy is reced- 
ing, that its epitaph may now be written, 
because its end is near. Sometimes that voice 
is the voice of industrialism. Sometimes it is 
the voice of ruling caste power; sometimes it 
is the voice of the Vatican; but whether it 
be predatory, political or ecclesiastical, always 
that voice is attuned to the same shrill, snarling 
key of special interest. 

My voice is small, but it is an American 
voice, and so far as it may reach, I would have 
it carry to America and to all the world the 
message that democracy is not dead, nor is Constitu- 
tional government, based on ‘“‘the consent of the 
governed,’ going to die. NWHumanity, especially 
our humanity, will—it must—triumph over 


18 









‘every obstruction to the great and final accom- 
‘plishment of freedom and justice. There can be 
‘no freedom, nor justice, if the powers of privilege 
in any form predominate. Our people them- 
‘selves must safeguard their sovereignty and 
‘employ it for the common welfare. 
_ The great issue in this conflict with paroch- 
ialism, then, is not alone the question of 
building our composite people into the highest 
‘social and political efficiency, nor of that 
accomplishment plus the safeguarding of our 
institutions through the actual SH ees of 
church and state. To the doctrine of democratic 
‘education and the principle of a religious freedom 
that works both ways, must be added the cause 
of civilization itself. 
The eternal right of mankind to self-govern- 
ment is being challenged throughout the world. 
If the military forces of an alien power were to 
enter America, we would repel them with the 
last ounce of our common strength. But it is a 
more subtle, more effective, more menacing 
alien invasion that we are facing—an invasion 
of military un-democratic ideas and ideals—a 
slow, sure assault upon Constitutional govern- 
ment. 

There is but one unfailing defense against 
every kind of alienism in America; it lies in 
adequate, democratic, public school education. 


The Vatican A Government 


We must face the ugly and menacing fact 
that the hierarchy seeking the uses and results 
of propaganda in our schools is not alone a 
religious, but also a governmental organization. 

The Vatican itself has a governmental char- 
acter. At this moment twenty-seven nations 
have duly accredited diplomatic representatives 
at the Holy See, seven of them bearing the title 
and rank of ambassador. And more are to 
follow. 

What does all this mean to America? 

Particularly, what bearing does it have upon 
this present all-important issue of education? 

I can tell you what the hierarchy does to 
education, and out of the mouth of Catholicism 
itself. Current History, for January, publishes a 
laudatory article on Mussolini’s regime in Italy, 
by Arnold S. Cortesi, Rome correspondent of 
the New York Times, accompanied by pictures 
of the Premier and the Pope, from which I quote: 


uy) 


“The most sweeping reforms of all have, perhaps, been 
made by the Ministry of Public Instruction. The number of 
schools has been reduced by suppressing those which became 
superfluous in towns which have lost population in recent 
years. The curriculum has been revised in such a way that each” 
school, in addition to preparing the student for the next grade 
school, also supplies him with a complete education, should he 
decide to interrupt his studies at any given moment. Formerly his 
education was not complete until he had finished his course 
at a university. Religious education has also been made com- 
pulsory; not only has the crucifix been ordered to be displayed in all 
schools, but religious education must also be imparted by teachers 
who have the approval of the ecclesiastical authorities . . . The 
reform which has given rise, however, to the greatest con- 
troversy has been the limitation of the number of students 
who can receive free education at the expense of the state. 
Not only has the number been limited, but also the number of 
students who may attend each school, a minimum of thirty- 
five for each class having been fixed If there are more 
applicants than vacancies, the best students are selected 
through competitive examination, the remainder being left 
free to attend private schools. The principle underlying 
this reform has been this: Formerly, when any one could 
obtain free education, thousands of young men who would 
have made excellent carpenters, plumbers or manual workers 
of any kind, obtained degrees in law, medicine, or engineer- 
ing, and then wasted their whole lives, because, having a 
university degree, they considered it below their dignity to 
return to manual labor, while they were, at the same time, 
unable to obtain employment in their profession, owing to 
the steady stream of graduates being turned out of the 
universities each year The state, therefore, has decided 
that only those students shall obtain free education who, 
hrough competitive examination, show that they are worth 
educating, leaving the rest to pay the fees demanded by 
private schools. This reform, a course, does not apply to 
elementary schools; indeed, the law making it obligatory 
for every child to attend elementary school is being applied 
more strictly than ever before.”’ 


Of course, what they call ‘‘this reform” 
does not apply to elementary schools. The 
hierarchy desires above all else that every 
elementary pupil shall be taught Catholicism. 
Therefore it imposes compulsory attendance 
upon the youngest boys and girls. Also it 
provides an obligatory religious curriculum 
for all such pupils. An article printed in 
the Catholic World, gives a summary of that 
curriculum for preparatory and all elementary 
grades. It is too long for insertion here, but 
its meaning and influences are apparent. 

Observe, now, how that church controlled 
education is operating at this moment in Italy. 


The Number of Free Schools Has Been Reduced 


Each school has been made complete in itself. In- 
stead of encouraging high and higher education, 


20 


he Vatican thus virtually invites every student 
to end it all whenever a grade is finished. 
_ Free school attendance has been restricted. Why? 
_ To discourage the training of young men who 
might better be ‘‘carpenters and plumbers.”’ 
| Do I need to ask how, in God’s name, is it 
‘possible to peer into the future and determine 
‘both the capacity and the career of any boy 
‘ever born? Would democratic America tolerate 
any such civilization-destroying injustice to her 
Mext generation or continue to countenance any 
‘influence that would sponsor such a monstrous 
‘perversion of opportunity? No, instead, we de- 
mand that the advantages of education be universal; 
that no caste, class or creed be excluded. 
| Teachers, in Italy, are approved by the ecclesias- 
tical authorities. Why? In order that the minds 
of the young shall be bent and biased by and 
toward Catholicism. It can have no other 
purpose. That is what church control means. 
here parochialism is nationalized, which is 
‘the ultimate aim of parochialism everywhere. 
‘The hierarchy believes in its own exclusive right 
|to ascendency, why should it not seek here the 
‘educational situation that has now come to pass 
in Italy? And having made parochialism a public 
policy, why is it not equally logical for them, 
as they are doing, to employ parochialism for 
‘purposes of propaganda? 
_ Church, parochialism, propaganda, politics—there 
you have the complete circle of cause and effect in the 
whole field of this discussion. Through parochial- 
ism the church accomplishes propaganda, and 
‘the two together—ecclesiastically controlled 
schools, teaching the supremacy of the hier- 
archy—lead directly, through politics, to tem- 
poral power. 












“Ecclesiastical Legislation’’ 


The Sentinel of the Blessed Sacrament, a catholic 
publication, quotes a person whom it calls the 
Venerable Peter Julian Eymard, as follows: 


“The Christian, therefore, owes to Canon Law, to the 
bulls, decrees and decisions of the Holy Roman church, 
which are but the law, the teaching of the Sovereign Pontiff, 
a filial obedience beyond all control by the civil authorities, 
who in this regard are without force or sanction "’ 


Read that again, because, it expresses, as you 
and I must learn, the attitude of the hierarchy 
towards governments the world over. 

Applied to this nation, it means that when- 


21 


a 


4 
ever and wherever the sovereign people of the 
United States, by constitutionally established 
processes, through duly elected representatives, 
enact any statute in conflict with any “bull, 
decree or decision of the Sovereign Pontiff’’— 
who is the Pope—that the Catholics of America 
are ordered by the Vatican to disregard that 
law. In all such conflicts of legal enactment 
and papal decree, their allegience 1s to Rome. 
They are instructed to set against our soverignty 
a higher and to them, more important, more 
omnipotent alien sovereignty. Yet we have 
boasted, and believed, for nearly a century and 
a half, that the separation of church and state 
had actually been accomplished in this country. 

Our Constitution provides for religious free- 
dom. As one result of that feature of the bill 
of right, we did not insist exclusively upon 
church marriage ceremonies; civil marriages 
were made the law of the land. To Catholicism 
and all its subjects that law is null and void. 
To them it is wholly without “‘force or sanc- 
tion.’’ Time after time has gone forth the papal 
or priestly decree to ignore it, and today, to 
them every American child born of a civilly 
made marriage is illigitimate. 

This attitude is by no means confined to the 
marriage statute. It is the same with anything 
and everything of a legal nature that may come 
under papal displeasure. The Catholic maga- 
zine called America, makes this announcement 
to American followers of the Pope: 


“Whatever may be affected by public enactment with 
regard to the rights of men and women before the law, no 
Catholic is free to admit any legislation which tends to destroy the 
center of authority in the home.” 


Why is no Catholic ‘“‘free to admit’’—and of 
course to abide by—legislative acts of the 
government of the United States? There is 
only one answer. It is because his higher 
allegiance is to a religious hierarchy, not even 
American in domicile, whose alien decrees can 
set aside all laws as easily as one law. 


I say to you that without law and order 
neither private nor public welfare is possible. 
When established authority be undermined, 
then the very foundations of society will 
crumble. Only our government itself has the 
right to say that this law or that law is null 
and void, by repealing it or by establishing its 
unconstitutionality. 


79 


| 
For any law to be ignored, either by priest or 
| politician, breeds a spirit of lawlessness, a con- 
tempt for constituted authority which is civili- 
-zation’s deadliest enemy, against which no 
mation can long contend and endure. The Supreme 
Court of the United States is at Washington, and not 
in Rome. 
No government can become imperialistic 
without ultimate disaster to itself and to every 
and it brings under subjection. That is the 
verdict of history, to which there has never 
_been an exception. The imperialism of a church 
‘is even worse. When a religion attains and 
“exercises temporal dominion, castatrophe for 
all concerned is more swift and sure. That is 
|what I condemn—not the American Catholic 
‘citizen, but the Roman Catholic hierarchy. 


For centuries education was almost exclusively 
church controlled. Practically no other educa- 
tion existed. That was the period of the great 
religious wars. Religious education and re- 
ligious warfare were simultaneous. Never in 

all the annals of mankind was cause and effect 

more closely related or more clearly defined. 

_ It made no difference whether it was Cathol- 

icism or Protestantism that had aggressively 
or in self defense thus usurped this function of 
thestate. Always it led directly and inevitably 
to civil strife and martial conflict. No religious 
Organization ever has or ever can dominate 
education without an aftermath of disruptive 
strife. 

The degree to which the religious influence 
prevails in schools will determine, invariably 
and inevitably, the extent of the resulting 
disturbance for humanity. 

I do not for a moment contend that America 
will ever submit to a degree of church control 
of education which would lead to the battle 
field, but I do say, with the tragic experiences 
of centuries supporting me, that each and every 
bit of ground gained by and for parochialism 
in our schools will dilute truth, diminish democracy 
and feed the flames of destructive controversy exactly 
in proportion to the extent of that influence. 

In the last century and a half religious educa- 
tion has declined. Simultaneously religious 
wats have disappeared. That is why I attach 
such paramount importance to this fight for 
democratic education. ‘‘The national safety, 


5 


prosperity and happiness’’—and peace—can be 
safeguarded in no other way. 


I know that if, throughout the ages, there 
had been adequate education—public school 
-education—conducted upon a plane high above 
propaganda, ninety per cent of the miseries 
and misfortunes that have befallen humanity 
would have been averted. 


And, likewise, as we are Christian citizens, 
seeking the highest harmony and happiness for 
all humanity, we must unabatingly and un- 
compromisingly combat every other kind of 
propaganda in our schools. 


War is the great curse of mankind. War 
always has its origin in religion, racial or 
economic causes. Unless the world again 
embraces the fatal folly of religious education, 
church conflict will remain in its grave. To 
bar parochialism and leave the gates ajar to the 
teaching of racialism or industrialism, will not 
insure peace. That blessing will never be 
seein until education is completely and 
everlastingly emancipated from every prejudice 
and every selfishness. 


Let Americans Get Together 


This country contains no element that will not be 
richly and increasingly benefitted by the development 
of public schools, nor any element that will not be 
injured, financially, socially, and Spiritually, 
through a failure to adopt such a program. All 
that being true, and it is true beyond dispute, 
every element in America, Protestant and Catholic, 
should stop fighting each other and unite for the 


accomplishment of a correct and adequate public 
school system. 


There are hierarchies and political systems, 
of alien character and alien domicile, which 
would not profit by democratic education in 
America. They are not of, by, nor for, America. 
I speak not of them when I voice the hope and 
prayer that the entire citizenship of the United 
States may get together and labor together for 


ie fulfillment of humanity's highest happiness 
efe. 


My condemnation has been of the political system 
of the Roman Catholic church, not of its parish- 
toners, nor of their religion. It is the hierarchy, not 


the rank and file of Catholicism, whose attitude I 
disapprove. 


24 


There is no feeling of intolerance, nor any 
hatred, in my soul. I speak not in bitterness, 
but out of love. I would that America might 
‘be at peace. We and the world have seen 
enough of religious wrangling and warfare. 
At least in this country there need be no further 
conflict. I say this to you because Protestant 
and Catholic have identically the same in- 
_terests at stake, and should be found fighting 
shoulder to shoulder for the re-Americanization 
*of our common Republic. All Americans are men 

and women whose days upon earth are far too short 
to be spent in any save the ways of amity and mutual 
helpfulness. The common enemies of mankind 
are sufficient to keep us all engaged. Let there be 
at least one nation within which humanity may 
attain and enjoy a blessed harmony of heart and mind. . 
Humbly, and yet confidently, because the 
combined experience of mankind throughout 
the ages confirms both its soundness and its 
necessity, I now make a Christian proposal for 
the ending of religious and all other disruptive 
controversies on American soil. 
Let us establish a court for the settlement of 
every case of falsehood and fallacy versus truth 
and rectitude. In that court let every element 
submit its opposition to the test and verdict of 
unselfish truth. 


It would take time to establish such a court, 
but once it was in operation there would be no 
delay nor any injustice in its judgments. 

A generation would be required to impanel 

the jury. That jury would be the electorate 
of the whole country, not one of whom would 
be permitted to serve until his or her complete 
competence had been attested by a training in 
which neither bias nor selfishness had had a 

_ part. Once the common mind of such a jury 
had been emancipated from every influence of 
prejudice and propaganda, its decisions would 

_ be divinely just. There would come out of it 

anew kind of jurisprudence, so generally ac- 
cepted that within a few decades all our human- 
ity might live in harmony. 

I propose, then, that all of us, Catholic and 
Protestant, submit our differences to democratic 
education; that is, a public school system in 
which the mind of each and every student shall 
not be bent and biased by any propaganda,— 
industrial, economic, political, or religious. 
Truth would come out of such a system—‘‘the 


° 25 


whole truth and nothing but the truth.” 
Factionalism and strife would disappear, be- 
cause there would be no half truth and perverted 
truth to give them abortive birth. 

After all, education is but the means to an end. 
In a higher sense, democracy is but the means 
to an end. In the highest sense, civilization 
itself is but the means to an end. That end is 
the triumph of truth, God’s truth and man’s 
truth, out of which alone can come the Heavenly 
blessing of a harmonized humanity here on 
earth. 

America Must Leap Tae Way. 




















